Well, these are two pretty similar cars we have here! It's only details that could potentially make the difference. Considering they both belong to the sports car segment and utilize the same 2-door cabriolet body style and the rear wheel drive system, it all comes up to the specific petrol engine choice they offer. The first one has a BMW-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 6-cylinder, 24-valves 231hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 240hp engine designed by Honda.

The fact that the Honda got tested by the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP), while the other contender didn't, offers a slight advantage, as the 4-star rating is better than none. Moving further on, let's take a closer look at some additional safety-related facts. Both vehicles belong to the sports car segment, which is generally classifying them somewhere in the middle safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it? Furthermore, when it comes to weight, a factor that most people underestimate, the German car offers a marginal difference of 5% more metal.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Honda is significantly less fault-prone, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of BMW with an average rating of 4.2, and models under the Honda badge with 4.7 out of 5. The same official information place Z3 as average reliability-wise, and S2000 is more or less at the same level.We should definitely mention that owners of cars with the same powertrain as the German car rank it on average as 5.0, while the one under the competitor's bonnet gets 4.5 out of 5.

BMW is a bit more agile, reaching 100km/h in 0.2 seconds less than its competitor. Still, it lacks the power to win the top speed competition, topping at 240 kilometers per hour, 1km/h less than the other car. When it comes to fuel economy things look pretty much the same for both cars, averaging around 9.7 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers (29 mpg), in combined cycle.

Honda appears just a bit more reliable, although the difference is truly marginal. The most important thing when deciding between any two vehicles should always be safety, both passive and active. In my opinion, everything taken into account, the Japanese car offers much better overall protection, which launches it ahead of the other contender. From there things take a different direction, with BMW offering somewhat better performance, just enough to call it quicker. To make things even better, it consumps less fuel! It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Honda. In any case that's my personal view, built upon all the data available to me. What should decide here though is the way you feel about the two vehicles, and I hope you'll find my guidelines useful in the process. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.